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Simone Biles performed again at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships on her newly standardized Yurchenko double somersault, and it cost her the gold medal in the all-around final because she hit the floor.
It is the risk she takes with the most difficult of the women's artistic scoring code.
In contrast to the first day of the team competition, this time the American athlete was unsuccessful, although she was able to secure the silver medal behind Brazil's Rebeca Andrade thanks to the high value of her performance and the average value of her elements in the final after two jumps.
Biles opened the competition, which was contested by nine gymnasts due to an error by the FIG in assigning the vacant place due to the withdrawal of a finalist.
The American chose the pair of elements that gave her good results in the team qualification, but this time with a different outcome.
She had not won the Yurchenko in the team finals or in the overall competition. There it was a question of playing it safe.
In this final she came off the board like a rocket, made the two perfect cross-square turns, but could not control the inertia she was carrying, falling backwards on landing.
Despite this, he was given a high score of 14.666, reduced by one point for the fall and another half point for the presence of his technician on the mat. With her second jump, the Yurchenko, half twist, pirouette and half (Cheng) she scored 14.666, and an average of 14.549.
She was only beaten by the last finalist, world champion Andrade. On her first jump, the same as Biles' second, she had the best score (15.000) of the final.
On the second, a less complicated Yurchenko double pirouette, she flew high and nailed it (14.500). Her average of 14.750 allowed her to deservedly retain her title. The bronze went to South Korea's Seojeong Yon, also third at the Rio Games (14.400).
In the final of the asymmetric parallel bars, Biles did not make the podium for the first time at these World Championships. It is where she excels the least.
Of her 35 medals won at World Championships and Olympic Games, only one, the silver at the 2018 Worlds, was won in this apparatus, where there are other specialists with more resources.
The best was the Chinese Qiyuan Qiu, representative of the refined school of Chinese gymnastics in the uneven bars, where her gymnasts look like hands pointing to 12 o'clock on a high-end watch for the perfect verticals they draw on the bars and the loose ones they can undertake favored by their short stature.
Qiu edged out 16-year-old French-Algerian Kayla Nemour, who this year got the French federation to release her to compete for Algeria after an acrimonious confrontation, with 15.100.
Nemour had an exercise with the same value as the Chinese (6.9) and received a 15.033. The bronze went to American Shilese Jones (14.776), for best execution tied with the other Chinese, Zhuofan Huang.
Biles, with little chance of a podium finish - her exercise was the second least difficult - lost it for good when she opened her legs in a twist on the high bar before the start.
The score she received, 14.200, placed her fifth. On the second day of finals, she will have the opportunity to add more medals on the balance beam and, above all, on floor, where she is the undisputed favorite.
MEN'S FINALS
In the first three men's apparatus finals, there was a split of victories. The Olympic floor champion, Israel's Artem Golgopyat, won his first world title after two silver medals in free hands.
His, with its six top-level acrobatic diagonals, was not the most difficult exercise (6.4), but that of Japan's Kazuki Minami (6.5), but the Israeli performed it more correctly, despite an imbalance in a corner when he was standing still! and obtained a 14.866 to 14.666 for the Japanese.
Another favorite, Carlos Yulo of the Philippines, was beaten by Kazakhstan's Milad Karimi by one tenth (14.600), which earned him the bronze.
Ireland's Rhys McClenaghan put Ireland on the artistic gymnastics map through his mastery of the vault on vault.
The Irishman won his second world title, after the one he won a year ago, with a superb performance that raised his score to a 15.100. He was the only one to surpass 15 points.
He was ahead of American Khoi Young (14.966) and another gymnast from a country with little tradition, Jordan's Ahmad Abu Al Soud (14.633).
In this final, the most complicated exercise belonged to the British Max Withlock, Olympic champion of the specialty in Rio 2016, but his execution was not at the same level and he finished fifth.
In the rings final, the last two Olympic champions, Greece's Eleftherios Petrounias and China's Yang Liu, rivaled in the stoicism of their strength elements and the mastery of the verticals avoiding any swinging of the rings.
The Greek celebrated his score (15.066), but Liu surpassed him with an even more refined execution (15.233). Petrounias took it for granted that he had qualified for the Olympics.